Bob Ashby

Review: ‘Matilda’ at Olney Theatre Center

A young hero in her own story who redeems the lives of others around her, the title character in the musical adaptation by Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin of Roald Dahl’s novel Matilda uses her...

‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ by the Rude Mechanicals at the Greenbelt Arts Center

Tennessee Williams famously wrote fragile female leads: Laura, delicate and easily shattered; Blanche, already defeated before she is forced to rely upon the kindness of strangers. Not so with Maggie...

Review: ‘Princess Ida’ by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company

Princess Ida, now being presented by The Victorian Lyric Opera Company (VLOC), is something of an odd duck in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. It has three acts, the dialogue is in blank verse, and...

Review: ‘A Misanthrope’ at WSC Avant Bard

The audience didn’t stop laughing all night. Between Matt Minnicino’s rhyming couplet- filled, witty, knowing, sometimes bawdy adaptation (or, as he would have it, “distillation”) of a Molière classic...

Review: ‘Stonewall 50’ by Rainbow Theatre Project

In the midst of Pride season, and in the 50th anniversary year of the Stonewall riots that defined the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, Rainbow Theatre Project presents a look at the...

Review: ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at the Maryland Ensemble Theatre

All the familiar characters are there: Lizzy Bennet, her sisters and parents; suitors Darcy, Bingley, Collins, and Wickham; the de Bourghs and Charlotte. The basic plot lines and period setting are...

Review: ‘Gypsy’ by St. Mark’s Players

Rose Hovic is one of the most riveting characters in the history of musical theater, inspiring allusions to the most renowned figures in dramatic literature. Gypsy’s lyricist, Stephen Sondheim (the...

Review: ‘Annie’ at Reston Community Players

Reston Community Players (RCP) serves up a tasty dish of that ultimate Broadway comfort food, Annie. Cooked up by Thomas Meehan (book), Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics) in 1977, and...

Review: ‘Spring Awakening’ by Boundless Theatre

It is a joyful occasion when a new, vital theater company opens, and the advent of Boundless Theatre in Frederick is a welcome addition to the Western Maryland arts scene. Their inaugural production...

Review: ‘A Comedy of Tenors’ at Olney Theatre Center

Things are getting silly at the Olney Theatre Center these days. Very, very, silly. Very skillfully silly, in the production of Ken Ludwig’s A Comedy of Tenors. A follow-on to Ludwig’s highly popular...

Review: Curse of the Starving Class at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

When we first see the Tate family in Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, now playing at Frederick’s Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET), they are already doomed, they just don’t fully know it yet....

Review: ‘My Fair Lady’ at Way Off Broadway Dinner Theatre

“She sweeps out,” says George Bernard Shaw of Eliza in a stage direction at the end of Pygmalion, leaving Henry Higgins alone and feeling self-satisfied. As Shaw said emphatically in his postscript to...

Review: ‘Into the Woods’ at Ford’s Theatre

I have loved Sondheim’s Into the Woods since seeing its original Broadway production. Three decades on, Ford’s Theatre’s current version carries the tradition forward proudly. For anyone unfamiliar...

Review: ‘Fallen Angels’ at NextStop Theatre Company

If there could be a single word to describe NextStop Theatre Company’s production of Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy, Fallen Angels, it would be symmetry. Emily Lotz’s delightfully realized period set,...

Review: ‘Queen of Basel’ at Studio Theatre

Warning: Spoilers Ahead Christy Escobar’s mesmerizing, compelling, utterly brilliant, performance is the centerpiece of Studio Theatre’s world premiere production of Hilary Bettis’ Queen of Basel. In...

Review: ‘Disgraced’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

Your mother no doubt told you not to discuss religion or politics over dinner. In Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, now playing at the Greenbelt Arts Center, the exchanges among the characters during the...

Review: ‘Oil’ at Olney Theatre Center

There are a few shows – very few – which on first viewing have left me breathless. The original productions of Sweeney Todd and Copenhagen come quickly to mind. To this small list add the American...

Review: ‘Finding Neverland’ at the National Theatre

The touring company of Finding Neverland (book by James Graham, music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Elliot Kennedy) is making a mercifully brief stop at Washington’s National Theatre. Spinning a...

Review: ‘Radium Girls’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

The horrific and – not too strong a word – evil events recounted in Maryland Ensemble Theatre’s production of D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls were, as the play underlines, a major, sensational, national...

Review: ‘Thunder Knocking on the Door’ at Creative Cauldron

Thunder, in this case, is one Marvell Thunder, a supernatural, shape-shifting, competitive trickster who has surrendered a good bit of his humanity to act as the spirit of the blues. Played by the...

Review: ‘Richard the Third’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Did ever a villain so enjoy his murderously evil ways as Shakespeare’s Richard III? In the Shakespeare Theatre’s production, Matthew Rauch’s Richard teaches a master class in duplicity and...

Review: ‘Perfect Arrangement’ at the Greenbelt Arts Center

The title of Topher Payne’s play is, of course, ironic. Set during the early 1950s “Lavender Scare,” a purge of gay and lesbian Federal employees coinciding with the Red Scare of that era, the...

Review: ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Signature Theatre

Outside, the Polar Vortex reigned. Inside, the jazz was hot and smoky and funny and sexy. Ain’t Misbehavin’, celebrating the work of Fats Waller, brought his music and the feel of his life and times...

Review: ‘The Mystery of Love and Sex’ at the Iron Crow Theatre

Human beings are mysterious creatures: how deeply can we know even those closest to us, or ourselves? What’s the cost of knowing? In Bathsheba Doran’s 2015 play, The Mystery of Love and Sex, having...

Review: ‘Jerusalem’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

People staying when they need to go; people going when they long to stay. People hanging on to bits of myth and legend, or a bit of land, in the face of overwhelming forces of economic logic....

Review: ‘Measure for Measure’ at Green Globe Theatre

There is some uncanny and rather dismaying contemporary resonance in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, now playing at Baltimore’s Green Globe Theatre. The virginal Isabella (Grace O’Keefe), about to...

Review: ‘Blithe Spirit’ at Spotlighters Theatre

British comedies considerably older than Noel Coward’s 1941 Blithe Spirit enjoy frequent, high-spiritedly successful revivals. Think The Importance of Being Earnest or Charley’s Aunt (a sprightly...

Review: ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ by Iron Crow Theatre

When the pre-show features an audience participation orgasm contest, can things possibly get any wilder? Yes indeed, as Iron Crow Theatre’s Rocky Horror Show readily proves. Rocky has always been an...

Review: ‘Striking 12’ by Free Range Humans at BlackRock Center for the Arts

Striking 12 is a striking exception to the mandatory Christmas sappiness occupying most entertainment venues this time of year. It’s set at holiday time, but the holiday in question is New Year’s Eve,...

Review: ‘How to Keep an Alien’ at Solas Nua

Love is unique. It is an intense bond of emotion, desire, and care between two people, deeply special to one another, that for them cannot be duplicated anywhere on Earth. Bureaucracy must routinize...

Review: ‘Charley’s Aunt’ at Fells Point Corner Theatre

At 126 years old and still going strong, Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas has lost none of its power to tickle an audience’s funny bone. Fells Point Corner Theatre’s production keeps the energy and...

Review: ‘Silver Bells’ at The Way Off Broadway Dinner Theatre

For people seeking holiday entertainment in the Frederick area who might seek an alternative to A Christmas Carol, or The Nutcracker, or It’s a Wonderful Life, or one of the endless cavalcade of sappy...

Review: ‘Running on Glass’ at Venus Theatre

Cynthia Cooper’s Running on Glass, playing at Laurel’s Venus Theatre, celebrates six pioneering female athletes, all of whom had to overcome barriers not only of gender but of race, class, illness, or...

Review: ‘Anything Goes’ at Arena Stage

“De-Lovely” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Arena Stage’s production of Anything Goes is as close to musical theater heaven as you can get. Cole Porter’s classic melodies and innuendo-laden lyrics, a...

Review: ‘The Toxic Avenger’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

The small, low-ceilinged theater at the Greenbelt Arts Center, with intimate seating arrangements and limited space for sets, is a natural habitat for The Toxic Avenger, a quintessential small-cast,...

Review: ‘A Chaste Maid in Cheapside’ by The Baltimore Shakespeare Factory

Moved by an impulse analogous to the original instruments movement in early music, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory (BSF) is dedicated to mounting the Bard’s plays and those of his contemporaries in the...

Review: ‘Illyria, or What You Will’ by Avant Bard

Illyria is fabulous, darlings. The clothes are to die for. The décor is out of its 1980s mind. The music is as eclectic as it is electric. And plot elements and characters drawn from Twelfth Night fit...

Review: ‘Henry V’ by Faction of Fools

A current exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library explores Winston Churchill’s admiration for Shakespeare, above all the World War II-era patriotic inspiration of Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V....

Review: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ by Restoration Stage at THEARC

Hurt people hurt people: a cliché, yes, but one that helps understand many of the characters in Steven A. Butler, Jr.’s Chocolate Covered Ants, revived in Restoration Stage’s gorgeous new home in...

Review: ‘The Fall’ at Studio Theatre

A passionate purity burns bright in The Fall. The incandescence of young people with hearts on fire contending against oppressive institutions burns bright in the 2015 South Africa portrayed in The...

Review: ‘The Addams Family’ by Silhouette Stages

It’s all together ooky, The Addams Family. That’s a good thing, of course. Save for one flaw, Silhouette Stages’ production of the show is a comic delight, well sung and danced by a talented cast. The...

Review: ‘Street Scene’ by Virginia Opera

Kurt Weill’s varied score, Langston Hughes’ eloquent lyrics, a powerful book by playwright Elmer Rice, and a quality ensemble cast combine in Virginia Opera’s production of Street Scene, to create the...

Review: ‘Heisenberg’ at Signature Theatre

Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg, now playing at Signature Theatre, begins with two souls in hiding. Georgie Burns (Rachel Zampelli) hides whatever pains and losses she has suffered behind her frenetic...

Review: ‘Cabaret’ by the Fredericktowne Players

The Emcee is worth the price of admission, and then some. In The Fredericktowne Players’ production of the Kander/Ebb hit, Cabaret, Lenore Mionette Florez is spectacular as the impresario of the Kit...

Review: ‘Hand to God’ at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

So what sort of play is Hand to God? Dysfunctional family drama? Teen coping with angst saga? Angry satire on a particular style of Christianity? Scenario for a horror movie? Raunchy sex comedy?...

Review: ‘South Pacific’ at Olney Theater Center

No one is from there. Espiritu Santo, the main island setting of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical drama and the James Michener novel (Tales of the South Pacific) that inspired it, is not the dreamy...

Review: ‘Passion’ at Signature Theatre

Stephen Sondheim’s Passion, now playing at Signature Theatre, has two of the greatest songs in the composer’s brilliant portfolio – “I Wish I Could Forget You” and “Loving You” – and three complex,...

Review: ‘Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce’ at Constellation Theatre Company

In Jonathan Dahm Robertson’s set for Constellation Theatre Company’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce, a collection of two-dimensional doors is depicted on the face of...

Review: ‘Chicago’ at Other Voices Theatre

Chicago, now running at Other Voices Theatre in Frederick, has a long and winding history. In 1924, Chicago reporter Maurine Watkins covered the sensational trials of Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan,...

Review: ‘The Story of the Gun’ at Woolly Mammoth

“All you have to do is move your little finger, move your little finger, and you can change the world.” That line from Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins could well serve as an epigraph for Mike Daisey’s...